Trusting God With The "If-Then"

If you've ever worked with flowcharts, there is a part in the process called "if-then".  The if-then process is part of decision making which contains decision boxes, arrows and outcome blocks in a flowchart to represent various scenarios and their consequences.

I don't know about you but I don't need a physical flowchart to have if-then scenarios constantly flooding my mind sometimes.  Honestly, I feel that I am cursed with constantly predicting scenarios in my life.  It's all about trying to control possible future circumstances in my life.  

As much as I hate to admit it to myself, I can't control things that haven't happened yet.  Although I know it is important to be prepared, I have also reminded myself that I can't always prepare myself for the if-thens in life or things that I don't know.  Many times we simply have to figure it out as we go.  

This a proverb (Proverbs 3:5) that tells us to trust in God with ALL of our heart and don't rely on our own understanding.  I can tell you that the main word that gives me problems in that proverb is ALL.  I can do well in trusting God most of the time but I often fail with committing to Him ALL of the time.  I do try and I continue to work on it.  I can make it difficult to hand over the control over to Him although He controls it all anyway.  The same proverb also says that He will direct our paths.  

Only of the things about if-then thinking about life is that we want to make the absolute right decision in everything we do - especially the big decisions.  I was struggling recently about a decision on moving and relocating to another city.  These are big decisions and I always worry about making the wrong decision but then I got peace about it that even if it turns out to be the wrong decision that God still has me and nothing has to be permanent.  He even reminds us that ALL things work together for good for us. (Romans 8:28)  I don't have to know all and see all.  I only need to trust in the one that does.  

Will we always get it right?  No.  We can't always worry about the if-thens in our lives or will will miss out on the present and what we need to do today.  I mean all we can do is to live one day at a time anyway so we need to live in the present and deal with tomorrow when it becomes today.  Sometimes all the if-then flowcharts in our minds never happen the way we think anyway.  

New things scare us.  Fear always grips us when we do new things or make decisions but if you think about it, everything we are doing right now is something that, at one time, we had never done before.

We can be assured of one thing, we don't have to worry IF God is going to be with us.  He WILL be with us in whatever decisions we make.  We just need to let Him control the IF and just make the best decision we can make based on what we know.  We can't possibly base our decisions on what we don't know.  

IF we trust in God THEN He will direct our path.

What Does It Mean To Be A Christian?

I heard someone say that you can’t be a democrat and be a Christian. Sadly in our country, the term Christian has been hijacked by a political agenda. 

So what does it really mean to be a “Christian”?

A Christian is someone who follows the teachings of Jesus Christ.

That’s quite a loaded definition and is interpreted in many different ways.

So what exactly did Jesus teach?

Jesus’ teachings taught love, compassion, forgiveness and being kind to others. He wants us to love our enemies and to treat others as we would like to be treated.

Sure, it can get deeper than those basic points of his teachings but you can see that none of these teachings give anyone a political agenda or permission to be weird. You don’t have to be weird to be a Christian.

Look, I grew up in a very emotional Pentecostal church denomination where it was fueled on emotion and strict rules of holiness. To put it plainly, it was pretty weird at times. I have always had an introverted personality so I never fit in with the things that went on in the church. Now I know some people need that type of church but just because I wasn’t “weird” never meant that I wasn’t a Christian.

When I went on a tour to Israel several years ago, our guide told us that most people there do not refer to themselves as Christians due to the historical issues that occurred during the crusades but they prefer to be known as “believers”.

When you look at today’s Christians in the United States, it is looking more like the crusades during the middle ages. Christians have become very aggressive and militant. Spanning most of the High Middle Ages (1050-1300 CE), a series of military expeditions called the Crusades was launched from Christian Europe against the peoples of the Near East. Sparked by a zeal to rid the Holy Lands of infidels. This is NOT what Christ had intended. We can’t force people to believe in Christ. This isn’t a belief done by force but with love and being the physical representatives of Christ in this world.

There is a false belief that the new administration is going to usher in a new Christian nationalism but it is destined to backfire and become like the ill-fated Crusades for the Middle Ages. You can’t force Christian. It won’t work. Many will say that we need the Ten Commandments in our schools or the Bible in every classroom. That is not how it is done. If someone isn’t a football fan, you can’t put a football in front of them and expect them to become a fan. They have to feel the excitement and become a fan on their own and in their own way. Not by force or hate.

Yeah, I might not agree with someone’s life choices or their lifestyles but I can still love them and associate with them. Didn’t Jesus do that too?

Federal Employees: Political Pawns in the Swamp

I just read an article (Read it here) about how federal employees are terrified with all the changes by the new Trump Administration.  It is sad that anyone would have to live and work in fear for their jobs.  The most hurtful part of the article were the comments.  Each comment was filled hate and happy that federal workers are in fear.  There are some huge erroneous assumptions that people make about federal employees.

I spent 30 years as an employee for the federal government.  Most think that federal workers are overpaid and lazy.  While there are some that are, I can tell you that most of the people I worked with throughout my career were dedicated and very mindful of spending the taxpayer's money wisely.  Yes, I did see some wasteful spending and people who had "fluff" jobs but those were few.  

Many view the entire federal workforce as the "enemy" now but I can tell you that the federal workforce is made up of people who support all political parties.  The thing that most don't realize is that we never gave a thought of politics and were even prohibited by law to talk about politics in doing our jobs.  I obliviously wore a campaign button once into the office and our ethics officer cornered me and advised me of the prohibition against doing so.  

During my entire time with the United States Attorneys' Office, the only time that politics became an issue was when a new political party took over as President because our U.S. Attorney had to resign since he was the only presidentially appointed employee in our office.  Sometimes it was sad because I enjoyed working with some of them and they had to resign simply because they were of a different political party.  I always thought that was dumb.  To me, it made more sense that someone in that position were neutral since we were dealing with justice.  

As federal employees, we were always pawns when it came time for the federal budget and we were furloughed.  We went without a paycheck.  Even when we got paid back later, it was always stressful because the bills still had to be paid on time.  We were not given a pass on that.  None of us cared about politics, we just wanted to get paid.  Many of us still had to go to work anyway when we were deemed essential.  So to say it is a fluff job is totally inaccurate.

I can tell you that a majority of federal employees are hard workers and they don't care about politics.  They are proud of working for their country and doing a good job.  

The President has said that he intends to have each federal employee pledge allegiance to him.  I suppose there is going to be some directive or form that employees will be required to sign to fulfill this directive if it comes out.  This is totally unheard of and simply not fair to force federal employees to pander to politics instead of being neutral.

Many ignorantly assume that federal employees do not pay taxes.  This is definitely not true.  We definitely pay and we always knew we were stewards of our own tax monies.

In the years I was employed, my dedication was to assist our office in finding justice for the American people.  It was never about politics, and it should never be political.

I worry about my former co-workers who are still working for the government.  I fear how this is going to change the federal workforce in the future.  Are there cuts that should be made?  Sure, every agency probably has some things that could be done more efficiently.  I am certain that people like Elon Musk are not remotely qualified to determine these types of decisions.  

I am proud to have served my country with integrity and dedication.  It was never to a president or any political party.  I did my job with the same dedication regardless of which party occupied the White House.  Many of my former colleagues have the same dedication.   They should not be hated or scorned for the service they provide to our country.  It is not fair to lump every federal worker into the swamp they want to drain.